Book summary

John O'Hara was as acclaimed for his grimly realistic short stories as he was for his novels. Set mainly in the Pennsylvania coal country where he grew up, his stories--and his fiction in general--were about striving, upwardly mobile characters and are invaluable slices of 20th-century social history.

Media reviews

"Taken as a whole, his shorter work, starting from the sharp, incisive stories of his early years at the "New Yorker" and continuing into his more relaxed and expansive period in Princeton, represents the growth and maturity of one of the finest short story writers of modern times."